Critical Issues in Participatory GIS: Deconstructions, Reconstructions, and New Research Directions

Abstract

In the mid-1990s, several critical texts raised concerns about the social, political, and epistemological implications of GIS. Subsequent responses to these critiques have fundamentally altered the technological, political, and intellectual practices of GIScience. Participatory GIS, for instance, has intervened in multiple ways to try to ameliorate uneven access to GIS and digital spatial data and diversify the forms of spatial knowledge and spatial logic that may be incorporated in a GIS. While directly addressing core elements of the 'GIS & Society' critique, these reconstructions of a critical GIScience introduce their own ambiguities with respect to access, equity, digital representation of spatial knowledge, and epistemologies of new GIS research practices. In this paper, I examine some of the new and persistent ambiguities of participatory GIS that bear inclusion in future critical GIScience research.

Digital Hegemonies: The Localness of Search Engine Results

“…The field of critical GIS, for instance, has long concerned itself with the fact that digital representations of places are rarely equitable or genuinely participatory (see Pickles 1995). Sarah Elwood (2006) has noted that little has changed for those at the bottom of the digital divide and financial and skill barriers continue to influence who gets a say in digital representations of the world and who does not (see also Craig and Elwood 1998). More recently, work has shown how user-generated digital content such as Wikipedia not just largely represents the Global North, but is also overwhelmingly produced by users in the Global North (Graham et.…”

Local GIS: development and assessment of the geoportal for local governments and local communities. Case study of a small town in Poland

“…One important role of geographic information systems is frequently presented in the context of social participation, and is known as participatory GIS (e.g. Elwood 2006, Cinerby et al 2008. For this reason public administration employees become aware that multifaceted computerisation which also involves offices and geoinformation technologies should be applied more broadly.…”

Toward Cyborg PPGIS: exploring socio-technical requirements for the use of web-based PPGIS in two municipal planning cases, Stockholm region, Sweden

“…19 Beyond its ability to portray ontological complexity, the cyborg also enables 20 epistemological hybridity (Wilson, 2009). Critical geographers have adopted hybrid forms of 21 knowledge to bridge the divide between quantitative and qualitative uses of GIS, and address 22 gender and socio-economic marginalisation within GIS practices and society (Elwood, 2006, Bergshamra district and Geopanelen in Tyresö muncipality), some of the main opportunities 25 and challenges for the uptake of PPGIS in urban planning were explored. The results 1 complement existing research by focusing explicitly on the use of web-based PPGIS in 2 municipal planning in contexts of urban densification.…”